Divine Intervention.

I had an email in first term from a friend who's child started kindergarten this year too. It was short and sweet, it said "Kindy SUCKS".

Then after school drop off that same morning, one of the other mums told me that the teacher suggested occupational therapy for her child because of untidy hand writing. Um, this is still Kindergarten right? And only beginning second term?  Sorry I just needed to check.

I told her "next time you go to the doctor, check out doc's handwriting; If you can - there's a reason they started typing prescriptions onto computerized forms and printing them out." 

Kindy-SUCKS mum's kid doesn't use scissors as well as her peers apparently. (OH MY GOD, call an ambulance!) This kid is a lefty and the scissors are made for right-handed kids. Could that be a factor? Does it necessitate a bunch of sessions with an occupational therapist? Who knows, but I don't know how efficiently or neatly Doctors worked with scissors in Kindy, however, most of them got pretty nifty with scalpels later in life.

Now until very recently, She-Who-Worships-Pink often said AeropRane and sometimes even Lellow, instead of yellow. A visiting speech therapist in pre-school flagged this as 'abnormal' and "needing attention", potentially with said, same speech therapist. (hmmm..).

So in comparing stories, I say this to the mum who's kid apparently has a mild dose of Doctors' Handwriting and she laughs. She tells me; "I said the same thing when I was a kid - my family still teases me, but I can actually say yellow now and no-one sent me to see anyone. I just worked it out eventually."

See there you go. Are we over being a tad interventionist?

I think it's great that pre-school and big school, teachers flag up things that may hold back our kids learning, emotional and social development. It was our little blossom's pre-school teachers that suggested speech therapy for her at three-years-old. She was frustrated and tantrumming, sometimes lashing out at other kids over her difficulty in finding her words. It turned out to be a good thing.

We did take her to have her lellow fever checked out too before the start of Big-School, and the speech pathologist got her to break down the word and sound out each syllable separately. (uh huh, genius!) After one session we didn't take her back - we practice difficult words at home now and we're doing fine. She says yellow just fine but occasionally still 'revy' instead of 'very' and still notices the odd aeroPrane. I admit, that I don't always correct her though, it's just so damned cute.

I know several kids her age with very pronounced (and very cute) lisps and they don't seem to have the professionals crawling all over them crying 'intervention!"  But Ita Butrose and Drew Barrymore both lisped their way to the top of their respective careers didn't they?

Well I've trawled the internet and library looking for answers and found none. I don't have any answers, I'm just trying to listen to the experts' advice when it's given and then use my own common sense.

So maybe this is just a topic for discussion?  

I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences too. 

Any Professionals out there willing to chip in?

When the poop hits the fan...and other embarrassing moments

There is apparently scientific evidence that getting 'knocked-up' shrinks your brain  - if that's the case then raising your offspring only makes you realise you didn't know sh*t in the first place.

I find 3-4-year-olds to be random little people with moments of cognitive brilliance peppered with episodes of psychotic, simian behaviour.

We'd had a sh*t week, quite literally, since we had a broken sewer pipe shared by all 4 Victorian terraces in our row. I found myself on Wednesday juggling a crazy child and a plumber who was dealing with a river of sewerage running down our newly paved side passage.

And while getting stuck into my new job as ‘involuntary strata manager’ led me to getting stuck into the Xanax, I had some lovely moments with my little girl as we replaced our afternoon bike ride to the park with a new stay-at-home game: 'chemical clean-up'. You know she's quite a dab-hand with a mop my girl.

So long as lots of bubbly detergent was involved she was overjoyed at the idea of swabbing the deck, which fortunately was only desecrated by the plumber's boots, while I tossed litre after litre of disinfectant, then bag after bag of top soil around the lower garden.

"What's that smell? It's disgusting!"; one of her new favourite phrases, had a lot of air-play until the disinfectant finally overpowered the previous stench.

Her speech has come along nicely, since she started with a speech pathologist; albeit sometimes embarrassingly so.  Like the time she pointed an accusing finger at an unfortunate looking elderly man in our doctors waiting room, crying “That man scares me mummy!”  I don’t know who was more mortified, me or the poor old man with the great-face-for-radio. 

And then there’s the joyful and loud descriptions of all her bodily functions: - During a speech pathology session: “I’ve got an itchy bum, Tiffany!” Both Tiffany and mum had to take a minute before being able to respond to that one, but it was quite good as far as sentences go.

And then again supervising bath time: -  on hold to one of the utilities, just as the operator finally answered, Lucie shouted in excitement “the pooh is coming mummy!”

I asked the operator if I could put her on hold while I perched my wet girl on the loo and Lucie qualified her statement, making an exaggerated grunting sound; “uuuurgh – it’s a really BIG POOH mummy!”

Someone somehow had turned up her volume. The operator was still laughing when I picked up the phone again.

And then the evening she turned political commentator: catching the early news on TV she took one look at our Shadow Treasurer, Joe Hockey, and shouted 'Go away cow!'.  

 

 

We didn’t know that Lucie needed help with talking; being in a bilingual family we expected her speech to be delayed that’s what ‘they’ say isn’t it? 

But after having her tested it turned out she did have delayed speech despite randomly using some very extravagant sentences.  (‘Go away cow’ not being one of those)

If you are in any doubt about your little wrangler I suggest you take a look at Speech Pathology Australia. You can read fact sheets online, download resources and look for practitioners in your area.  It will either give you peace of mind or set things straight before it impacts their schooling and social skills. 

We’ve made huge progress in a few short months and not just with Lucie’s communication skills but her personal confidence and interaction with other children. :0)

linking with melbourne mum